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Jed Mercurio, former doctor and creator of the groundbreaking Cardiac Arrest
(BBC, 1994-96), originally published Bodies as a novel, having decided that his
theme of medical incompetence, bureaucratic mismanagement and disaffected
frontline staff would be more acceptable to a general readership than to
television commissioning editors. Hat Trick Productions were to prove him wrong,
however, and in 2004 provided BBC Three with an exemplary serial encompassing
medical ethics, vicious hospital politics, adrenaline-charged theatre scenes and
inter-medic sexual intrigue.
The choice of a labour ward added special poignancy to Bodies' succession of
life or death medical emergencies, rendered ruthlessly credible by a
well-observed script and eye-popping prosthetics and make-up work. These
unbearably tense scenes played against the background of an Obstetrics and
Gynaecology department struggling with a dangerously inept consultant, by turns
sympathetic and deplorable (and played with great shading by Patrick Baladi).
The dilemmas, challenges and compromises confronted by new member of the
department Rob Lake were the backbone of the first series.
The second series justified its longer run by introducing new characters and
expanding its critique of NHS politics, a move that may have diluted the tension
of the main story thread but proved consistently compelling. The world portrayed
was claustrophobic, despite the regular appearance of new patients. Scenes
rarely took place outside the hospital, and spouses remained almost entirely
offscreen. Mercurio revived the tangled web of allegiances and animosities for a
one-off special, Bodies - The Finale (tx. 13/12/2006), taking up the story three
years later. This played with the audience's expectations, providing few easy
resolutions and concluding in defiantly downbeat style.
Although it was extravagantly praised by critics, Bodies' harrowing portrait
of the contemporary NHS predictably upset the medical establishment. The British
Medical Journal accused the series of lacking both a sense of perspective and
"any feeling for the human warmth that keeps NHS staff going", prompting other
medical practitioners to come to Mercurio's defence, praising his representation
of the crisis on the wards and the hierarchy's uncompromising attitude towards
whistleblowers. While contemporary series were depicting hospital life as soap
(Holby City, BBC, 1999-), or farce (No Angels, Channel 4, 2004-06; Green Wing,
Channel 4, 2004-07), Bodies stuck to its political agenda, with an account
cataloguing systemic failures grim enough to alarm patients and NHS Trust
managers alike, albeit without the overwhelmingly negative vision of G.F.
Newman's earlier The Nation's Health (Channel 4, 1983).
Fintan McDonagh
Warning: the video clips associated with this title contain graphic representations of operations which some may find distressing.
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1. A disaster is averted (2:34)
